I put a deck on top of my short bus last summer. I need to put some railings up there now. Ideally itd be about 3ft high, and people would be able to sit with their legs dangling off the edge, while still being safe. Looking into either having them fold down, or ones you take down and put up everytime. I want to do this as cheap as possible, and am running out of good ideas for it. Let me know if you have any interesting, and cheap ways to do this. the deck is only about 8x10. Thanks all!

I would have folding railing that is bolted into place at all times. When you need to raise it, you just tilt it up and let it set down into place. The bolt would have to be able to travel through a slit in the railing, but it would be as sturdy as drop in rails and no chance of accidentally leaving them behind or having to tie them down, just bungee the top railings to the bottom railings. But make sure that two of the lower parts of the railings are longer by the width of the railings so that the railings that fit into them will lie down on top of the other railings, kinda like a cardboard box.

My thought is galvanized pipe sections, one layer fastened to the deck and other sections slip on top with threaded couplings to anchor. Or, I would like to find hinges that would drop down a section like the old baby cribs or maybe hospital beds.. Photos of your deck please..... want to do one this year on my bus. Leslie

I used prefab scaffold railing. It's made to assemble/disassemble easily and quickly. You just have to mount receiver posts somehow on the bus/rack. I used pipe, cut and with holes drilled to accept the click-locks of the scaffold pieces, and mounted them on the end of the joists of the deck. This is generally quite functional, HOWEVER, since I cut out the 2x10 joists to fit on the curved top of the bus, they are structurally only 2x4 or 2x6s. No problem until you mount the pipe railing receiver on the 10-inch end part, which can then get torqued and the "hanging" part of the 2x10 can easily be broken off. This is a deck design flaw, though, not a railing one. It goes up and down pretty quickly. And it wasn't too expensive. Lucinda's gallery should have some shots with it up.